January 6, 2012

Hope is the dream of a waking man.” Aristotle

Rant and Tip for January 6, 2012

Quote: “Hope is the dream of a waking man.” Aristotle

I really do enjoy reading Aristotle’s quotes. I like to contemplate them and try to apply them to my life. I was asleep for many years and let my hopes and dreams sleep as well. I was not awake enough to realize what I had let happen to my body. When we wake up our hopes and dreams come back to us and it is never too late to work towards those hopes and dreams. Stay awake and look at your hopes and dreams and work on making them come true. Don’t let the trials and tribulations of life in general or let yourself fall in to a mundane routine that allows you to sleep through life.

A day is only 24 hours and it is difficult to find time to get a good workout in while having a house and two wonderful children. There is always something to get done. This is why I give up my lunch at work and get to the gym during the day. While I say I give up my lunch what I actually do is eat at my desk. This entails planning my lunches and snacks through out the day. I need to eat enough to fuel my workouts and keep my metabolism cranked.

I was talking to a trainer and one of her clients yesterday. The client was talking about how they felt they had put some fat back on and could not understand why. The client mentioned how they were exercising a lot and not taking any fat off. At this point I piped in and asked her how she was eating. She said she eats clean. I inquired as to the amount and she said not much. Now the trainer knowing how passionate I get on this and said, “Jimmy she only had and egg for lunch”. I was like “WHAT!” I said listen there are plenty of fat people at the gym and most of them will tell you they eat well to, the problem is they do not eat enough. Or they are not eating the right things.

For today let’s discuss not eating enough. Your body is an amazing machine. It knows that to maintain muscle it takes a lot of fuel and work. Your heart has to pump harder and you lungs need to work well. Think about this for a second if you are carrying a backpack with 50-lbs in it you will work harder. If it gets to be too much on you because you did not eat enough, you will lighten the load. When you do not eat enough you body will do the same thing and it will not be fat it will try to get rid off. Fat is a fuel reserve that the body has stored away for times when food is very scarce. If you do not eat enough the body says to itself let’s shed some of this extra muscle thus lowering your metabolism. You need to make sure you are eating enough calories so your body does not go into starvation mode and feel that it needs to hang on to the fat reserves it has.

I am pretty stoked today. There was an article written about me in a national magazine. It is a magazine that is produced by the company I get my protein supplements from. The magazine itself I will be on the cover of. However the web version is out today. You can read the article here. You will need to click the link for Featured #2. Parrillo products have helped me a great deal in keeping my protein levels up. Their products are top notch and sometime this year I hope to go through their certified trainer program. The thing I like about their program is that it requires you to go to the Parrillo training center. It is not just an online class you take and then go to a testing center and pass a test. There is hands on information that needs to be shared. I hope you enjoy the article.
Have a great workout!

Tip: With many biceps curls exercises you'll also have different levels of resistance during different parts of a rep. Many times you may not feel much resistance on the biceps at the top of a curl rep. To get resistance on the biceps throughout an entire rep you can do some sets of cable curls.  If you can change the height of the low pulley, the angle of elbow flexion that results in your forearm beng perpendicular to the cable will change.  This results in varying when the torque applied to the elbow by the external load is maximized.  In simple terms, changing the angle the cable makes to the ground changes the strength curve. There are also some machines that will allow you to feel resistance throughout a curl because they have different places where you can put weight on to overload the start, middle, and end of a rep.
Another method is to hang chains or resistance bands from the bar, dumbell, or whatever implement you are using. This will result in the external load increasing as you lift it. This will help level out the mechanical advantage you have at the top of the curl.





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